US-Iran war live updates: Hegseth says Iranian in Donald Trump assassination plot has been killed

Donald Trump says Iran were within two weeks of having a nuclear weapon during his first term in office.

“It is a nation that is out of control and they would have used it on us if we waited any longer,” Mr Trump said.

“A big factor was the killing of Soleimani in my first term and maybe the biggest factor was the rebuilding of the military in my first term and the B-52’s obliteration of the nuclear program.

“Within two weeks they would have had a nuclear weapon if we didn’t do the B-52 attack.”

US President Donald says the Iranian resistance is being ‘wiped out’ as the war rages in the Middle East.

“We’re in a very strong position now,” Mr Trump said in his latest update on the conflict.

“They’re (Iran) leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they wind up dead.

“It’s and amazing thing that’s taking place before your eyes, because for 47 years we were pushed around and we shouldn’t have been.

“You see it as well as I do the tremendous progress that’s being made.

“They’re missiles are being wiped out rapidly, their launchers are being wiped out and they’re attacking their neighbours.”

Donald Trump has spoken about Iran’s nuclear program and called out Barack Obama over a deal with that he “terminated”.

“That was a tremendous threat to our people. For 47 years they have been killing our people and killing people from all over the world,” Mr Trump said.

“I think we have great support.

“If we didn’t terminate one of the worst deals ever made, the Obama nuclear deal, I call it the Obama nuclear deal where he gave everything to Iran including a nuclear weapon, it was a road to a nuclear weapon bad things would have happened four years ago.

“They would have a had a weapon four years ago if I didn’t terminate that deal.”

Donald Trump has spoken about the war against Iran saying the US is “doing very well”.

“On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it about a 15,” Mr Trump said at a forum in Washington.

“We have the greatest military in the world by far, and if we hadn’t have done it first they (Iran) would have done it to Israel.”

President Donald Trump is speaking at a discussion panel on ratepayer protection in the US and has said countries buying wind turbines from China are “dummies”.

Mr Trump asked the room in Washington “how many wind farms do we see in China?”

A US submarine has sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening the US military’s pursuit of the Iranian navy.

Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister identified the warship as the frigate IRIS Dena and said it was heading back to Iran from an eastern Indian port.

The attack happened in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of kilometres from the Gulf where US and Israeli forces are striking Iran and it is retaliating with missile and drone attacks.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon.

“Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo.”

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The US military has killed an Iranian official who headed a unit behind an alleged assassination plot against US President Donald Trump, the Pentagon says.

The announcement of the unnamed Iranian official’s killing came during an operational update to the four-day-old war with Iran at the Pentagon.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth touted the killing, which he said took place on Tuesday, even as he stressed the Iranian official was not the initial focus of the war.

“The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump and President Trump got the last laugh,” Hegseth told reporters.